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Over
the past four years,
two friends have lost their wives to breast cancer. Both women
struggled valiantly against the disease, one for five years and the
other for almost nine years. In both instances, within a week or so of
each funeral, I wrote notes of condolence in which I expressed to each
friend, as best I could, God had blessed each with a wonderful wife,
marriage, and family. My hope was to encourage each friend to
experience gratitude to God for the great gift each received even
though, quite understandably, each was experiencing great grief.
The responses to
my two notes of condolence differed but each offered a nugget of
spiritual wisdom.
The first note
arrived in the mail a few weeks after I had sent my condolences. The
line I haven’t forgotten from that response is: “I have lost the love
of my life.”
Reflecting on
those words, I thought about how God had truly blessed this friend with
a beloved—not a partner, not an equal, not a spouse—but, as we heard in
today’s first reading, a beloved who was real “flesh of my flesh” and
real “bone of my bone.” Would that every marriage also reflected this
reality to the world—remember: a sacrament is an outward sign instituted
by Christ to give grace—as spouses reveal the gift of God’s life and
love to the world each and every day of their marriages!
The second note
arrived in the mail several months later. The line I haven’t forgotten
from that note is: “In the middle of this, all I have is faith;
without that, I have nothing.”
Reflecting on
those words, I thought: Without faith, this is a truly cruel and absurd
world, one that exerts its greatest power by destroying what we love.
But, at the same time, this truly cruel and absurd world cannot destroy
love itself. My friend’s testimony to the virtue of faith, in
the midst of his very painful loss, inspired me. Would that husbands
and wives in every marriage experienced this reality—remember: a
sacrament is an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace—as they
reveal the gift of God’s love every day of their marriages to each other
each and to the world.
Good marriages
like those of my two friends just “don’t happen.” They aren’t created
out of nothing. No, the end result—a good marriage—is a
consequence of the important choices originating as young people become
serious about the type of person they want as a spouse, the type of
personal characteristics they are looking for in a spouse, and the
places where they will look for that spouse. When young people root
their very earliest and first choices about a spouse in God, they will
set about a very different, more spiritual approach to “matchmaking.”
They will seek their true happiness in God by looking for a spouse who
seeks to do the same. Young people—“children” they are called in
today’s gospel—know that when they root marriage in God, this union
cannot be broken. Or, as Jesus taught, “For what God has joined, no
human being can destroy.”
Both of my
friends who lost their wives to breast cancer were painfully aware of
the deep meaning of today’s scripture. From the Book of Genesis, we
heard how in God’s providence, He created woman from the flesh of man,
neither as a subordinate nor as an equal but as a partner. It is the
woman God has created for man who will complement the man. Only in this
woman will the man discover completeness. And, without this woman, not
only is the man’s life incomplete but he is also aimless, listless, and
lonely...very lonely. Nothing else—none of the toys and trinkets found
in the Garden of Eden—can fill the void of this incompleteness.
Likewise, this
story of the woman’s creation suggests an important spiritual lesson for
young women. She is not man’s equal. No, she is his divinely-ordained
complement. Furthermore, as the man loves, honors, and obeys the
woman, he complements her and, in this—what St. Paul calls being
subordinate to one’s husband—the woman will discover her completeness.
Absent this divinely-ordained complement, not only will the woman’s
life be incomplete but she will also be aimless, listless, and
lonely...very lonely. Nothing else—none of the toys and trinkets found
in the Garden of Eden—can fill the void of this incompleteness.
Consider what’s
involved here:
·
There
is no equality between the sexes because each needs the other to be
complete.
·
There
is only the unity of the two—where the two complements become one—in
love.
·
And,
“God is love,” St. John tells us.
Adam’s wanderings
through the garden—where God had already provided everything Adam could
possibly want—were aimless and listless. Yes, Adam had everything.
However, his happiness was found in things. That is why, even
though Adam lived in the Garden of Eden, he experienced anguish. Why?
At a more personal and spiritual level, nothing God had created for Adam
was what Adam truly and deeply needed, namely, the happiness he could
discovered in a divinely-ordained person, that “complement,” who would
bring Adam to completeness, that is, who would make Adam “whole” (or
“holy”). That is what Adam needed: not a thing but a divinely-oriented
complement!
Unfortunately, we
oftentimes think of the bliss believed to have characterized the Garden
of Eden and lost when sin entered the world through Eve’s freely-willed
disobedience. But, we also fail to realize how that bliss did not come
until God created “a suitable partner” for Adam to discover.
This gives us a
crucial insight into God’s providence. God has created a suitable
partner, “the love of my life” as well the “flesh of my flesh” and “bone
of my bone.” However, it is up to young people to seek that person as
they walk through the garden of their lives. The trick, of course, is
for young people to realize that none of the trinkets and toys that
young people like to surround themselves with, although they may make
young people happy for a bit of time, provide young people what they
truly need.
Nearly ten years
ago, I had a dinner with a college hockey player who now plays in the
NHL. During the course of our conversation, the young man shared his
desire to get married one day and to have a big family. But, as I
recollect, he said,
I need to find a
certain type of girl. She needs to share my values and my faith. She
needs to want a close-knit family that does just about everything
together. I know it sounds sort of silly—even “conservative”—but she’s
got to be religious—you know—to believe in the Church and to be able to
teach our kids the faith.
Then, the young
man closed by asking a question: “Do you know, Father, where I can find
a woman like this?”
What immediately
ran through my mind was, “What, you’re asking me? Do I look like
someone who has that answer? Why don’t you ask your Dad?” But, forcing
those thoughts out of my mind, I said, “Well, I know for sure that you
won’t find her looking into the hockey stands.”
Two other answers
to the young man’s question came to my mind.
The first was
what Sr. Gerald Francis, OP—who was my Homeroom and Geography teacher
when I was a seventh grader—quite frequently stated. We must surely
have been a bunch of ruffians because she said: “Say a Hail Mary every
day and ask the Blessed Mother to give you the spouse you deserve.”
When my niece,
Gretchen, was a seventh grader, she asked me if it was okay to ask God
to guide you to the perfect spouse. I told Gretchen exactly what Sr.
Gerald Francis, OP, told us, to which Gretchen responded, “Do you
believe that? Did you do that?” After I said, “Yes,” Gretchen
immediately retorted: “Well, Uncle Rich, I guess God has answered your
prayers.”
In light of my
niece’s response, I didn’t think it appropriate to give that answer to
the young man.
The second answer
that ran through my mind had to do with the kinds of things the young
man was looking for in the woman he wanted to be his spouse. So, I said
something along these lines:
The type of woman
you are looking for sits in church every Sunday. She probably helps out
in the parish in some way, too. Quite likely she’s also involved in
teaching CCD or in the young adults group. I wouldn’t be surprised if
she regularly prays in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel. So, just go to
church every Sunday like you do and keep your eyes peeled because she’ll
be there, if you are. The probabilities are markedly increased that
you’ll find what the woman you are looking for in a church than in the
hockey stands or a singles bar.
There it is!
This young man—just like Adam—finds his life incomplete without the
divinely-ordained complement who will complement him. Then, as
divinely-ordained complements, when united in love of God, they don’t
view themselves as equals, they know they are more than friends, and
they endeavor to be more than soulmates despite what eHarmony.com might
advertise. Instead, they seek to be for each other—and for all the
world to behold—a sacrament. That is, they seek to bean outward sign
instituted by Christ that gives grace not only to each other but also to
the world. United in God, the couple becomes a “light to the nations,”
a beacon for hope in a world that would rather have young people despair
that committed, faithful, married love is an unattainable goal and that
divorce is inevitable.
This is the
profound truth—and the ideal of marriage—that Jesus protects in today’s
gospel when he says, “What God has joined, no one can divide.” And it
is this truth that the Church will never forsake. Although many adults
don't want to hear this it, it is a truth little children grasp
intuitively when, for example, upon hearing the sad and oftentimes
debilitating news that their parents are divorcing, little children ask:
“Why won’t Mommy love Daddy?” (or, “Why won’t Daddy love Mommy?”) Isn’t
that the truth?
Due to hardness
of heart—not the inability but the unwillingness to forgive—Moses
allowed for divorce. But, Jesus taught something else, far more
demanding, and perhaps far more self-accusing. “What God has joined no
one can divide,” Jesus said. Divorce, then, is absolutely intolerable
because it symbolizes the “hardness of heart” where a spouse strenuously
proclaims for all to hear not that “I can’t forgive you” but that
“I won’t forgive you. The former reflects feelings that
have been hurt yet are changeable, while the latter reflects a will that
one stubbornly makes unchangeable.
In our culture,
many believe that divorce is inevitable. And, I would agree that
divorce is inevitable…but only when a young person seeks his or her
completeness in things and fails to seek it in the person God has
created to be one’s complement. Some of those things that make
young people happy today include careers, materialistic lifestyles, or
multitudes of other toys and trinkets that bring instantaneous but
transient pleasure. And, among all of those things, perhaps the most
potentially malignant attitude is for a young person to decide to use
another human being solely for the purpose of feeling happy. This isn’t
what God intended in creating the woman, as we heard in today’s first
reading. No, what God intended is for young people to experience the
completeness to be discovered when one sets about and finds a
divinely-ordained complement, that person God created to bring
completeness—the holiness—that every young person so desperately needs.
I would offer
that this serves very will to explain why so many young people today
seek happiness in so many things and even reduce marriage to a thing.
They “get” married and experience happiness, albeit transient
happiness. But, within a few years, they end up in divorce court
because they have failed to seek that person whom God created as a true
complement. They have failed, however, to “become” married, that
is, to root their lives and choices in God so as to be a sacrament to
each other and to the world.
So, should we be
surprised that so many marriages have ended in the tragedy of divorce?
I don’t think so. After all, how can “God join” what young people
purposely exclude God from?
I believe this
also explains why, when a sacramental marriage ends in the death of
one’s divinely-ordained complement, the surviving spouse experiences
such profound and personal loss, pain, and anguish. For the surviving
spouse, it is as if one-half of one’s life has been lost. Certainly,
the death of one beloved can make all of life seem like is nothing other
than a cruel joke that takes away the love of one’s life. But, as
my one friend who lost his wife to cancer wrote, “without faith, I would
have nothing.”
Yes, we still
have faith that what God has created to complement oneself—and through
which God reveals His life and love—will again be experienced and
fulfilled in God’s Kingdom where death has no power. While death can
take away and destroy what we love, death cannot destroy the
love we have experienced.
A brief
commercial break...
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HOMILY
